The Mike Bravo Experiment – Thwarting Retaliation

More and more of us are being exposed to cases of blundered investigations, both by school administrators and actual investigators. Retaliation and wrongful attacks on educators usually follow. As a former engineer, I take every situation and try to break it down. “Oh that bridge collapsed…well was tha failure in the beams, columns, cables, legs What caused that to happen” So now as I see a potential issue I try to analyze it section by section. I had the opportunity, as chapter leader, to be included in the beginning stages of something that was not right…corporal punishment of a student by an administrator. With that I present you the timeline of the Mike Bravo Experiment. See if you can see a pattern.

(note: the names are changed to protect the innocent)

Stage 1: Mike Bravo witnesses a student being dragged down the hall, against their will, by an administrator. He contacts me, fills me in and I send the following email to the Principal and the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), while he submits a witness statement.

As chapter leader of our school, IS 49, I was informed, by a staff member, of an incident witnessed. As we are mandated reporters I am reporting this to you and OSI.

“On January 10, 2013 at the start of period 2 (approximately 9:06am) Assistant Principal _______ was seen pulling a student, named Jason, down the main hallway into the main office, by the wrist. It appeared it was against his will. Once entering the main office, as AP ____ continued to pullJason towards your office, Jason grabbed onto the counter with his free hand. At the point, the witness claims that AP _____ pried that hand off the counter and continued to pull him against his will into your office.”

Paraprofessional Michael Bravo. He informed me that he wrote up the incident. Soon after he contacted me and told me, about 2 hours ago, that he is now being summoned for a disciplinary hearing on Wednesday by that same assistant principal, ______, that he witnessed do this.

Perhaps we can push back that disciplinary hearing.

Francesco Portelos

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Pretty crazy, right He submits a claim of corporal punishment and he himself gets called in for corporal punishment just a few hours later. “What were the allegations against him” you ask Ready …he allegedly didn’t let a student leave to go to the bathroom. When DECEMBER 18TH! A month before.

It gets better. OSI decides to intake the case against the Assistant Principal. They assign investigator, Dennis Boyles. Now I don’t know Mr. Boyles, except for meeting with him recently, but I don’t like that he was mentioned as part of the principal’s support network in an email a few years ago.

Want to take a guess as to how the investigation against the assistant principal will go I’m thinking the same way all the investigations against the administration have been going….nowhere.

I’ll keep you posted…

So far there has been no disciplinary action on Mike Bravo. My hats off to him. If we only had more educators who would stand up and fight for student rights.

UPDATE -03-18-13 Mike Bravo informed me that he received a disciplinary letter for his file today. In the letter it states that he did not allow a student to go to the bathroom. All the evidence shows that the student did not even ask to go to the bathroom, nor did they go to the bathroom on themselves Even if the allegations were true a non-disciplinary counseling memo would have sufficed. However, we are dealing with a retaliatory administration who lost the staff and is trying to keep them from speaking up.